The problem of forests in the world may be summarized as follows. Firstly, both the quantity and quality of forests is declining. Secondly, the security of the supply of goods and services from forests is under threat. And finally, there are welfare losses borne at household, local, national and global levels due to decline of and the insecurity in the supply of goods and services from the forests.
Forest policy analysts have pointed to several causes for this decline in forests, goods and services, and welfare. These are broadly grouped under the heads of policy failures, market failures and institutional failures. There has also been considerable variation at both national and international levels in deforestation rates which has lead to the suggestion of combining local field-level investigations with cross-national research, to " build theory and amass evidence" about the causes of deforestation. More generally however, there is little agreement on the key causes of deforestation, which factors are significant and their relation to forest loss, e.g. income has been posited to be linked both positively and negatively to forest cover.
